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It’s times like these, where you’re both hidden away in the safety of his respite block and laying on his horn pile, that the tenseness oozes out of you. It doesn’t matter that he’s snoring away, dozing with his head in your lap, drooling a little stain into your pants which is sure to stink of faygo. It doesn’t matter that there is a horn perfectly jammed just between your shoulders in a way that you know will have you aching for nights. It doesn’t even matter that, like this, fighting sleep is the hardest it has ever been on this hideous rock. Nothing right now matters aside from carding your hand through his hair, lightly brushing the bases of his horns occasionally.
On one such touch he stirs, rolling his head only slightly and opening his eyes a mere crack. A bleary grin spreads across his face and raises a hand to grab your free one, taking a couple of attempts to blindly grope. He interlocks your fingers and his expression makes your heart falter. “My beautiful fucking miracle brother,” he whispers and suddenly you are hit with the surrealness of the situation; how incredulous it is that you could find someone who makes you feel so wanted and loved with a single phrase and expression. It makes you want to wax the best poetry that paradox space would ever have the good fortune to hear, but that was always more his kind of thing.
"You pitiful fuck," you half-snarl instead, twinging at your inability to express yourself properly. You were always such a fuck up. Instead of getting upset, however, he just laughs, a low and rusty noise that should be horrible and yet isn’t, and your self-destructive thought process halts in its tracks.
"Pale for you," he grins again before closing his eyes. You have no spare hands in which to hide your face as you begin to flush and instead shake your head intensely as if that will rid you of it.
"Pale for you too," you cough out, but he’s already back to dozing, soon to drool an even larger stain on your pants. And somehow, none of that matters either.